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From: ed@unisoft.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Cousins taxonomy
Message-ID: <155@unisoft.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Oct-83 20:02:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: unisoft.155
Posted: Sun Oct  9 20:02:52 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Oct-83 06:52:03 EDT
References: iwu1c.154
Lines: 15

Cousins' namings are actually very straight forward.  Degree-of-cousinness
(first, second) refers to the number of generations the cousins are
decended from the siblings who started it all.  Thus, first cousins are
children of siblings, second cousins are grandchildren of siblings, etc.
Removal deals with cousins at different levels of the tree, one level
of removal is one generation.  Thus the child of one sibling and the
grandchild of the other are first cousins once removed.  (Logically,
it seems that they could also be second cousins once removed, but
for clarity's sake, the convention is to remove from the older generation.)

Your great-uncle's son (your great uncle being the brother of your
grandparent) is your first cousin once removed.

Ed Gould
ucbvax!mtxinu!ed